City of Night
by Tawnya Kisaragi
Summary: Karkat Vantas wasn't a revolutionary. He was a kid who got pissed off when a group of bullies took what was his. A cyberpunk interpretation of the psionic-helmsman situation and an excuse to have Karkat be a BAMF. Because that doesn't happen as often as it should.


This story was inspired by_ Miracle of Sound_'ssong by the same name: go look it up. There's also a full playlist for this fic up on my tumblr site. For naming purposes, Daevik is the Signless and Uathan is the Psiionic, though that should be pretty obvious.

* * *

The sun was setting. From where he sat on the roof, curled into the safety of the shadows provided by the building's cooling blocks, the cityscape was bathed in nothing except brilliant red. The towers of glass and steel reflected and refracted the dying light, mixing with the heat haze of the lingering day to produce an effect not unlike fire. Spires waved in and out of focus all across the horizon. The first lights of night life started to flicker on, embers caught on hot air, spiraling up into the encroaching darkness that would never truly overcome the city. It stood proud on the edge of its destruction, as if daring all who saw it to question the strength that kept it alive even as it devoured itself from the inside out.

Or maybe the more accurate descriptor should have been blood. There was certainly enough of that running through the streets these days, staining walls, stairwells, feet, hands. All the lives carried out in this densely packed hive were smeared with it in some form or another. Not even the hot rains of the summer season could wash the marks away because the blood that ran through the corrupted capital never saw the air. It was soaked into the wires that connected it all together, a perverse rendition of the capillary system that kept a flesh body running. Everyone thought of it as a nervous system, telling each little automated piece how and when to function, but the truth remained that far more than information streamed through the fiber optics and laser lights. So much more than the fake half-lives of the net junkies and the insipid cruelty of anonymity lived on in the wires.

The poetic parallel didn't matter. Blood or fire, by the time the night ended, there would be one less heartbeat sustaining this concrete monstrosity and more than a few things would be turned to ash. Tonight would only end when one of them was left lying broken upon a funeral pyre, and he had not lived to this moment by being the type to die easily.

Yes, the city was burning under the last flare of the sun. And the red eyes that glared out at it were the ignition point.

Karkat Vantas was many things. A revolutionary didn't happen to be one of them. That title could gladly go to his brother Kankri, who for years now had filled the internet with his tedious (and rather sanctimonious) ramblings on just about every subject someone could have an opinion about, and quite a few more topics besides. It could be applied to his father, but Daevik was more of an idealist than anything, too passive to incite the labeling properly. His values had definitely been instilled into his children—self-possession, understanding, equality, cooperation—though the effects manifested in quite opposite ways. Where Kankri attempted to disseminate information in the hopes of enlightening others, Karkat wrote the majority of the populous off as hopelessly, aggravatingly stupid and kept to himself. Though he went about it in a spectacularly backwards fashion, all the older brother wanted was to help others. The youngest couldn't have cared less about anyone beyond the small group of friends he had.

He still didn't care. Even after all this time and energy, after everything he—they—had managed to accomplish, making the world a better place had never been the goal. It was a nice enough perk; he wasn't going to be an ungrateful asshole about that. He simply would have been sitting there, waiting for the agreed upon time, the right moment, even if it was certain to cause ragnarok as well. In a couple respects, it probably was, and he did not, could not, would not give a single damn. Karkat wasn't a revolutionary—he was a kid who'd gotten angry when a group of bullies took away what was his. He was just taking it back and fuck anyone who tried to stop him.

The only thing was, the bullies in this case happened to be the Government, and what they had taken was…

_ "You don't have to do this, KK." _

The words were seemingly spoken into his ear, yet the truth more closely resembled being completely in his head. It was a voice Karkat had followed for nearly three years now, searched after for four, and now stood mere hours away from reclaiming. A voice only he had ever heard, had doubted his sanity over…maybe even fallen a bit in love with.

"Shut the fuck up, Sollux."

All it took was a slight adjustment in his sight and his friend was standing next to him, a ghost now revealed through the inversion of the normal world. The reasoning behind it all had been explained, but failed to stick. Something about genetics and spontaneous substrate capabilities and the miasma created by the competing electromagnetic fields inherent in heavily layered intra-cyberspace structures. Whatever the reason, the effect was the stripping of corporeality from perceived existence down to the networks that everything had been built upon. Rather like stepping out from a finished, textured game map and into the wire structure of the code itself; a comparison that struck a bit too close to home in its accuracy some days.

In the alt-world, Sollux was a blue construct that didn't look much different than boy Karkat knew from so long ago. Short hair, lanky build, oval face—an awkward youth that had just started maturing into the long limbs and gangling angles of his body, and hopefully out of the lisp that haunted his lineage. The only weird part (if the rest could be construed as "normal") was that his right eye was missing, a black space the only indication that something had not been filled in somewhere along the way. Other than that one detail, however, the whole could have been plucked from a dream of a better time, which presented them both with a possibility neither had truly considered before now.

Three years as nothing more than a free-willed, half-connected code meant little would change over time. Stripped of the physicality that promoted aging, this version of Sollux would remain virtually the same no matter how much time he spent flying through the interconnected netspace. In the beginning, making contact had been more important than predicting life expectancy, which had been mere hours at the time. Now, the lack of forethought on that front presented a unique issue because the body attached to this alternate consciousness had most definitely aged during the years it had taken to come this far. After spending so much time interacting with the memory, could the reality be accepted?

_"You don't even know if I have a body left,"_ Sollux said, jumping straight to the heart of the matter. Apparently that wasn't a question only one of them had been asking themselves.

"I said I would get you the hell out of there and I'm damn well going to, asshole. I did not just spend the last six months setting this up so you could wuss out on me now. So suck it up, fuckass; you're not staying a ghost in the machine past tonight."

For once, Sollux didn't argue. Instead, he curled around his legs, sitting so that two of them faced one another. The move made him look small, vulnerable, and sort of defeated, which prompted Karkat to reach for him. They couldn't actually touch, one was too material while the other was too immaterial. There was still a slight static spark that came with the approximation of a hand on an arm.

"Hey," he said quietly, waiting until the white and black stare focused on him. "What kind of a douchebag friend would I be if I didn't even try?"

_"A smart one."_

"Yeah, well, if I was so damn smart, it wouldn't have taken me so fucking long to find you in the first place. I've been forced to leave you behind twice now. Even if I only walk away with a corpse, don't make me leave without you again."

_"And what if a corpse is all there is?"_ Sollux asked just as quietly.

"Then we bribe the Zahhaks into making an avatar for you and hope it doesn't end up with too many weird horse parts in the process." Of course, even that plan could go awry. Code could exist without a master, but not without a connection. It was possible that once the body was pulled from the grid, there would be nothing left, not even the construct. Though there was no doubt Sollux ha also thought of this, Karkat hoped indignity would cover the logic gap.

The other made a little choking sound. _"Fuck you, KK. That's a horrible plan B."_

"Then I guess we have to fall back on 'make plan A work.' " Karkat wished he could squeeze the arm he wasn't touching. "This will work. And if it doesn't, we'll figure something out. Necessity and last minute and all that shit, okay? Don't give up on me now. It'll only make me try harder to prove you wrong."

Finally, there was something of a smile, the bare turning up at the corners of the construct's mouth. _"You're such an idiot."_ The tone remained fond.

"We've already proven the Vantas line is a gullible bunch of fucktards when it comes to the Captors in their lives. Kankri was the only one with enough smarts to stay the hell away from you morons. Do you have any idea how humiliating that is? That prick gets to be the smart one." Karkat heaved a dramatic sigh. "At least my dick's bigger."

_"And backed by balls of solid tungsten the size of small moons,"_ Sollux snickered.

"Damned straight. The gravity well created by the sheer size of my junk alone will jack someone up. I would carry a sign warning people of the danger, but then I'd get picked up for owning an illegal ordinance."

Karkat was more than ready to keep going regardless of how juvenile the banter became, if only to keep his friend distracted for as long as possible. Then a real world voice starting to talk in his ear. "Holy fuck, Vantas, has the heat up there fried what's left of your brain? You're mumbling to yourself again and this ain't exactly the time to take a trip to looneyville."

Karkat tapped the comm. piece in his ear. "Fuck you, Strider. I'm fine. Get off the line."

"Hey, I'm just checking up on you, oh fearless leader. This whole plan does kind of ride on you having your shit together."

"I assure you my shit is very much together, but I will flip it if you _don't get off the fucking line._ Or do you _want_ everyone and their cyber bulge buddy to know I'm here?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Time check: Eight forty-two, mark twenty-seven. Keep calm and carry on." The comm. line went silent. JThe sniper girls ade and Roxy were stationed on top of two of the other buildings to provide sniper support with the Strider brothers as their personal bouncers. The only time frame that had allowed all of them to get to their starting positions had left them sitting atop their respective structures for almost a full day. They were all apparently starting to feel the stress.

When Karkat looked back, Sollux had moved away again and was now standing close to the roof edge as if contemplating the sun he couldn't see. What little ease in tension there had been before was now completely shattered between them. Karkat could feel the heat of the evening pushing at him, but only saw the darkness of the alt-world and not for the first time, wondered which one was the truth of the world.

"Sollux—"

_"I'm sorry, KK. I've been nothing but a pain in your ass since the beginning. No, let me say this, because I might not get another chance," he said when Karkat tried to interject. "I am sorry. I should have left you alone, let you get on with your life, but I was a selfish prick and you've done nothing except put up with me. And at the risk of being a melodramatic loser on top of everything else, I really appreciate you doing this. For believing me. For coming to find me. I'm really glad you're still my friend."_

It sounded too much like a goodbye for Karkat's taste. He shook his head. "Tell me that when we're finally face to face, jerkwad. All the sentiment in the world doesn't mean jack shit until this is done." He hesitated a moment, debating on whether he should continue. "You were supposed to be the first, not the last. The plan has always been to get you out. Always. And I _am_ going to do it."

_"I know. I wouldn't expect anything less from you, you stubborn asshole."_

"Then believe in me, too."

And that was the crux of the matter—the belief that things would work out. That there was something worth saving. That one life wouldn't be bought at the price of another. It wouldn't matter how thorough their plans were, how well they'd tried to compensate for shortcomings and complications and retaliations, or even the sheer numbers on their side. All the planning in the world didn't waylay the possibility someone, or several someones, wouldn't walk away from this intact, if indeed they walked away at all.

Sollux finally turned to face him again, smiling in the most heartbreaking manner. The construct slowly faded out and the world shifted back to the setting sun, though the words remained long after he'd left. _"That's why I'm still waiting for you."_

…Eight forty-two is what Strider had said. Probably closer to nine by now, given the soft shades of purple and blue that that bled into the sky. Four more hours to wait, to go over the steps Karkat would take in this complex dance his brother had designed, to wonder if it would be enough.

He'd waited four years for this. Four more hours seemed like it was going to take even longer.

While he waited, Karkat remembered.

He remembered the man who was his father's friend, big and intimidating and oh so very serious until he smiled. How he spoke with a strange inflection that drew out all the "s" sounds in his words. The special diadem and bracers he always wore. The bizarre comfort of his heterochromatic eyes, the smell of ozone that followed him everywhere he went, and how all those traits transferred to his sons as well.

Uathan Captor and Daevik Vantas had been brothers in all but lineage, so it made a fair amount of sense that their children would also become friends. Time and presence had more to do with actually becoming friends than much else—one family visited the other at least once a week. Kankri didn't get along well with anyone, but Karkat had found the older Mituna to be amusingly annoying while the younger Sollux became the kind of friendly rival all young children look for unknowingly. So while the older brother insisted upon staying with the adults, the Captor children would play with youngest Vantas, helping an otherwise shy and apathetic child eventually make other friends as well. He remembered petty squabbles and mud fights, marathon gaming session and pillow fort sleepovers. Teasing Mituna about kissing his girlfriend and being teased by Sollux for his spaghetti-factory coding. Falling asleep during his father's stories and the subtle comfort of seeing his father fast asleep against Uathan, finally finding the rest that seemed to escape the man more nights than not.

Karkat also remember the day the Government came. How solid, steady Uathan had stormed into their home, alternately arguing with his children and Daevik about what was happening, bracers broken and diadem sparking red and blue. How the electricity cut out, turning words into action as his father deftly swept all the children out the back door and ran, never looking back even when something exploded and someone screamed. They ran and ran until night fell, until the entire world had changed scenery.

That was the first time he'd heard the term "psionic" and how people classified as such could do amazing things with their minds alone. Anyone with said talents was supposed to be registered, but the Captor family was not. They wore power limiters to numb their powers down and pass themselves off as slightly eccentric, but otherwise normal people. Doing as such had been his father's idea; thusly he felt extra responsible for what was happening, which had him urging the rest of them forward while he went back to see what had become of Uathan. Since both Mituna and Karkat had friends within the exceptionally powerful Makara family, they were directed to go there.

Government drones caught up to them halfway to their destination. Mituna peeled off to cover their continued escape, but it still wasn't enough to shake the tail they now had. Literally steps from the all clear, Sollux followed his brother's example. "_They have to capture psionics alive,_" he had said, already surrounded by the crack of red and blue lightning. "_The children of a dissident will just get killed._" Then Kankri had thrown him into the house while his friend Gamzee held him back, stopping him from rushing back out to a fight that was honestly over before it began.

And that was the last time he'd physically seen Sollux; a limp body carried away by the armoured drones.

The Vantas children found sanctuary in the Makara household, but little else. Though they tried, neither Kankri or Gamzee were designed for being care-givers; their best did little to soothe the anger that was borne from fear and abandonment. It did help point him in the right direction, though. When it became painfully clear Daevik would not be returning, Karkat asked the all important question of _why_. Why had this happened? Why had his world been torn apart and pulled inside out? Why hadn't Kankri been more upset, acting instead as if this had all been inevitable? Why hadn't he, Karkat, been told more in the beginning and why was he being held back now?

It started with finding out what was so special about a 'psionic.' From there, it was a crash course into the subversive, abusive slavery that founded the very tool he used to learn about it all. Psionics were used as controllers, amplifiers, and maintainers of the internet, their extra-mental powers translated into electrical impulses that kept the vast Empire functioning at its break-neck speed. Of course, the Government called it "Special Service," made it sound prestigious and glorious, practically groomed such individuals from the cradle up that it was the most important thing they could do with their lives. The truth, however, was that the body was shoved into a machine and locked there, kept just alive enough so that the brains that made all the marvelous cogs of the regime turn remained active and functioning. There they'd stay until their powers burned out, death the only way to end "service."

It made him sick. It made him angrier. More than anything, though, it made Karkat _act_. He couldn't just sit idly by in his scrap of safety knowing what even that much had cost. So he began digging further, looking, learning, always searching from something even he barely understood, a concept that couldn't be proven—the ghost in the machine. Endless hours were poured into his search, until the only times he wasn't sifting through code and cryptic message boards was when he physically passed out or the times Gamzee lured him out with the promise to teach him how to fight.

A frustrating but informative year was spent like that, insomniac nights tempered by physical exhaustion and the stubborn arrogance of a child who was always so sure success would be his if he tried just a little bit harder or longer. In the end, he still didn't manage to accomplish anything. He never found what he was looking for. Rather, it found him instead. At first glance, it had been nothing more than a fragment, a broken piece of code floating in the maelstrom of loose data, something easily brushed aside and ignored, save for the fact it kept following him. And when Karkat had gone to destroy it, thinking it some half-assed virus (which was true on both counts), his HUD had gone black as he tripped into the alt-world for the first time, coming face to face with the construct of the friend he was searching for.

There hadn't been time for many questions. After proving this wasn't some sort of trap or sick joke, Sollux had begged him to go out and save Mituna, who had apparently never stopped fighting. Soon, he was either going to break or burn out. In either case, he'd be useless to the government and therefore left to expire. Sollux produced building plans, guard rotations, shipping schedules—everything he possibly could get his electronic fingers on to help facilitate the escape. All he needed was a physical body to carry the action out. Not knowing the first thing about planning something like this, Karkat had gone to his brother. Kankri had had to be bullied into helping, but ultimately provided the groundwork needed. A small band of people willing to help joined together and carried out the mission.

It turned into a stone in a pond. The rescue of Mituna, which went down something more like a group of neighborhood kids trashing that one asshole on the block's house rather than a strategic military move, lead to the startling revelation that Daevik was still alive, a "guest" of the Government's. This in turn brought out the otherwise secret existence of a resistance group the eldest Vantas had once helped form. More people joined in, the plan became more complex, the building assaulted bigger, and the execution less like egging someone's property and more like a deliberate, thought-out sequence of events. With Daevik once more helping rouse the rabble, freeing Uathan became the objective. Not just a building this time, but an entire active installation had to be taken down. Volunteers poured through the cracks for the mission. This time, there was subtle infiltration, months of planning and routing and distractions, all ending in fire fights and explosions. They won their prize, but limped away for the effort expended.

Through it all, Sollux had been there. The construct had stayed with Karkat, helping where it could, a constant reminder as days slipped by into months and years that there was still a promise to be fulfilled. Now was their hardest strife and most complex plan—a multi-layered, multi-fronted assault, filled with subterfuge and layered redundancy. Now, three years after the fact almost to the day, he was going to free his friend, no matter the cost, and hope that time had left enough behind to make it all worthwhile.

At the one hour mark, Karkat finally uncurled himself from the position he'd taken up in dawn's early hours the day before. He stretched the kinks out of his muscles before he started checking over his gear. Six buildings within the complex were getting hit, though most of those assaults were starting on ground level, all to distract from the one entering from the roof. The only hope they had of pulling this off was by getting in and then getting back out in a limited amount of time. The fastest way to Sollux remained a seventeen story drop and a crash though a set of windows on the east side, executed alone. A signal check went out twenty minutes before start. He adjusted the laces of his boots and the bindings on the leather plackart protecting his chest and stomach, then the vambraces shielding his forearms. He triple checked the arrangement of his belt, making sure his sickle was easy to access and that everything else was where it needed to be without him looking for it. The directions were repeated under his breath as he climbed into the free fall harness and measured out his rope once more. Total comm. silence indicated there was five minutes left. Karkat paced out the running distance he needed, secured the cloak he'd worn on every other operation so far, and focused on breathing through the nerves.

On the mark, the hacked broadcast began. Daevik's soft, infectious voice became the backdrop for the first frontal assault teams to begin their distraction. He heard the gray voice of his brother giving out instruction, heard Mituna's unhinged snarl of glee as something exploded, heard Gamzee's flip into berserker mode. And as he sprinted to the edge of the rooftop, throwing himself as far out into the ether as he could manage, he heard Sollux whisper, _"Good luck, KK."_

Falling from great heights, he'd heard, was supposed to make you feel weightless. In a backwards sort of way, he did, for the whole two or three half seconds he managed to defy gravity. Then his stomach dropped into his toes, dragging the rest of his body with it. Until this moment, he'd never jumped down further than about ten feet and that hadn't been so much a jump as it was a fall from a tree years ago. He pinwheeled in panic for a moment because he was falling much too fast and the ground was a hell of a lot closer than he wanted it to be even seventy stories up and he couldn't stop _thinking_ about the splatter he was going to leave behind—it was easily the longest point thirty-eight seconds of his life. Then the rope went taunt, stopping his outward motion and slowing his fall enough that he felt in control again.

He grabbed his lifeline and twisted, trying to line himself up with the window he was attempting to smash through. It didn't have to be perfect, just enough to make sure his boots went through first. His body straightened out as he tried to give his swing just that much more oomph. The reinforced glass ahead of him spiderwebbed with cracks as an unseen force started hammering at it. Bullet after bullet slammed into the glass courtesy of the sniper-girls, weakening it so that the moment Karkat's feet connected, it shattered rather rebounded. He was still air borne when he unhooked from the line, sliding to a stop on the carpeted floor a little harder than intended, but back on his feet moments later.

A map of the area and his route through it had been burned into his memory. He had, at most, twenty minutes to get in, get Sollux stabilized for movement, and get back out. Five had to be given to getting to and the away from the holding room, which meant there was realistically only about five more he could dedicate to Sollux himself, who honestly probably needed more than that. There was no time to be wasted with scrambled directions. Karkat dashed down the hallway he'd entered, swinging a hard left at the first junction, then right again two more after that. That hall terminated in a series of elevators and the emergency stairs. He slammed into the stairwell with barely any loss of momentum, hopping the railing and skipping down the extra four floors he needed to go by leap-frogging between railings in the narrow space between flights of stairs.

The swipe of a stolen key card and its associated passcode had him into the restricted area. Three junctions, another right, then an immediate left. Most of the skeletal night shift had already been evacuated thanks to the multiple fights breaking out all around them. There were still guards, however. The first two Karkat encountered never knew what hit them. The next three saw him before he saw them. He barreled straight into the closest and sent that one tumbling into a second. His sickle caught the gun of the first, ripping the weapon from a surprised grasp as a fist followed behind. He turned, counting the lost seconds, to deliver the same knockout blow to one of the recovered guards and helped the disoriented last rest with a well-placed kick.

Sine too much time had been wasted on the living defenses, he barely paused when he rounded a corner and found one of the armoured drones. It was an intimidating thing, nearly filling the hallway with its size, but that was about all it had besides its reputation in such cramped quarters. A slide through the widely planted legs provided an opportunity to cut the hydraulics that allowed its movement while a slice up the back tore apart most of the weapon wiring and the power supply. Not before it nailed his shoulder, however, with one of its self-defense mechanisms. That was new. Karkat ignored it as he continued on.

Despite having seen the machines used to interface psionics with the grid twice before, he still stopped short in horror and fascination when he entered the central chamber his friend was housed in. It was huge, for starters, a metal and wire tower that took up most of the floor space and the entire four stories to the ceiling. Some of it was for the regulation of the body trapped within. Some of it was converter tech, translating the impulses of the brain into a more compatible form of electricity and data. Most of it was processor units directing the energy to its new purposes, regulating the demands of the net so that more or less could be drawn when needed. And that was just the hard tech he understood. The bioware was entwined with the power cabling and miscellaneous wires, faintly pulsating and writhing tendrils of a sickly magenta colour, mostly shielded from the outside world by the wall of panels and circuit boards. But inside…

With a snarl, Karkat got to work in the station monitoring life functions. More hijacked passwords spilled from his fingertips as he began hacking the system, turning off alarms and trying to convince the machine its occupant was in the middle of a medical emergency despite the reports that said otherwise. After a protracted fight, the machine began to power down and he began uploading his insurance—a couple viruses that would cripple other biotech as well as the government systems as a whole. Satisfied that the task was complete enough, he turned to the now open machine and swore.

Higher than a kite on mind honey and doped up further by the sedation drugs, Mituna had still managed to struggle wildly enough that those slimy tendrils hadn't been able to anchor properly. His sync rate had never been much above about thirty percent because of it and the machine had always been open to help with the constant need for medical assistance. Uathan had fought, he had the scars to prove he had resisted integration as well, but ultimately lost and became heavily encapsulated by the bioware that would sustain his life. Sollux wasn't as nearly entwined as his father had been, wasn't scared like his brother was, and those things only made looking at his rail thin body all the more painful because it meant he'd laid down willingly into his glass coffin.

And Karkat didn't have time to be thinking or feeling. Another virus was uploaded directly into the machine, this one designed to make the medical emergency real by simulating a seizure within the occupant. With all the warning lights and sounds disabled, the only way Karkat knew the ruse worked was by the sudden convulsion of the pink tentacles secured to the body as they immediately ceased pumping whatever fluids were contained there within. Seconds later, the oxygenated liquid that filled the glass tube Sollux had been encapsulated in began draining. As soon as a suitable amount had been removed, a panel of the glass opened itself, allowing direct access. Ignoring the biting cold, the residual mucus-like slime, and the rancid smell, Karkat hauled his friend's unconscious body up enough to twist it and then jammed two of his fingers as far down the other's throat as he could.

For a couple terrifying moments, there was zero response. "Come on, asshole. Work with me," Karkat muttered, trying to press a little deeper. "Come on…_come on_—there we go." The body spasmed as the gag reflex kicked in, heaving out everything it had been laden with. He had to do it twice more before the slightly luminescent liquid stopped coming up and Sollux started coughing up the remnants in his lungs. Hearing that first shaky inhale heaved a weight off Karkat's own chest. His hand still shook as he reached for the first series of pressure syringes. Adrenaline to keep the heart rate up, an expectorant to help dry out his lungs, and a whole slurry of vitamins, minerals, supplements, and chemicals to stabilize and revitalize a body that hadn't had to support itself in a while. Most importantly, however, was the mild histamine that encouraged the remaining bioware to release. With the non-critical portions already falling away, Karkat pulled the other from the chamber to the floor. He managed to peel the lingering suckers from Sollux's legs and arms, but had to cut the tendril attached to the spine, producing an ear-shattering squeal from the machine and an indistinct cry from Sollux, though that appeared to be the only effect. The regen film was wrapped tightly around each major muscle set before Sollux's head was wound securely in gauze to protect the wires and ports that would require surgery later to remove.

The body was starting to shiver, which was a good sign. Karkat added the meager warmth of his cloak to the process, then hauled the other onto his back. Sollux wasn't as heavy as had been feared (and was a reason to fear in the first place), though the process was still awkward because of his lanky, stick-like limbs. The wrists were bound together and secured to the free-fall harness. The legs were likewise pulled around Karkat's waist and bound into place to the harness as well. Confident he'd still be able to defend them if needed, he ran for the exit.

In his mind, Karkat knew he'd been running behind schedule. That's why when he left the machine room, he immediately opted for the third escape route he'd memorized. Escape Plan C entailed using one of the fire escapes and dropping straight down the well. Since all four sides of the building had fire stairs, it didn't matter which way he went—he could get out. The space between flights of concrete stairs, however, was smaller than anticipated. Alone, Karkat could have shimmed through, but with Sollux on his back, he was left to descend the old-fashioned way. He pounded down three more levels before the reverb of striking boots not his own caught up to him. Taking the chance he could go down faster than the security force could come up, he bolted down two more flights before ducking into another unsuspecting office space. It appeared to be an almost exact replica of the floor he'd entered in, so thanks to the lack of government imagination, he found another stairwell quickly.

The time he took to stop and listen at the next fire door was rewarded as a security detail climbed past. He counted out an agonizing ten seconds, then slipped out, trying to remain as quiet as possible. It ended up being for naught when he then ran straight into a smaller contingent also making a sweep not even a full flight of stairs down. The two men in the front were felled without much fuss after the comical two-second stare and double-take, but the other two started shouting. Karkat got his sickle into one while the last took off running, screaming at the top of his lungs, "Breach! Breach!"

With a curse, Karkat broke through the next door, "Should have gone back up," he hissed to himself. "I was right on time; I could have made it…"

"Karkat, where are you?" Kankri's voice was sharp in his ear, a glaring contrast to the demonic baying of sniffer dogs now ringing out over the corresponding shouts of men. "They know what you've done—it's all over the wire."

"Bit busy," Karkat gritted back, swearing again as the heard the hounds being loosed onto the floor. All the carefully prepared routes and counteractions dissolved from his mind. Ducking sharply around corners as he attempted to twist his pursuers up in the labyrinthine halls, he tried to remember where he was in relationship to where he wanted to go. A glance out a window told him he was on the wrong side of the building. All four sides of the structure had fire stairs, but only the north and south sides had elevators. Escape Plan A had been to leave the way he'd come in, repelling the rest of the way down under the cover of sniper fire. Obviously, he'd spectacularly botched that and C. Escape Plan B, however, involved the elevator shaft they'd taken great pains to sabotage into an out of order status. It wouldn't take him clear to the ground, they hadn't gotten that lucky, but it would give him a good shot past many of the other floors—if he could find it without getting shot first.

The security response was not at all what had been expected. There was only supposed to be a few units of men here and there, the bulk of the actual force mostly left to the drones and other automated protocols. The automations were down because he'd taken them out with one of his viruses, blinding and deafening the physical units as well as anything built into the building, thus rending it passive. There were men and drones everywhere, though, and more than a fair number of units had those damn sniffer dogs with them. The cybernetic enhanced hounds had not been planned for in the least and left Karkat shivering whenever they howled like some sort of pit demon upon catching a trace of his scent. The only thing that worked to his advantage was that there was at least four separate guard units trying to chase him down, confusing the trail. He also seemed to have a better mind for the maze, helping him break away and head for the elevators unhindered. A point that turned moot when he finally made it because, of course, they were being guarded as well.

There wasn't a clean way to get where he needed to go, nor really the time to play least in sight, so Karkat chose the fast and dirty way—he rushed the two men. The out-swing of his sickle caught the other in the throat as he slammed bodily into the first, using weight and momentum to shove the man off balance and through the partially open elevator doors they had been checking. The half thought-through plan worked a little too well. With his own balance already thrown forward to compensate for the body on his back, Karkat couldn't pull up far enough fast enough to check his own advance. His arm knocked against the sliding doors, forcing him to drop his sickle, but not before the edge bit into his leg, and then he was plummeting to the same fate he'd just sent another to.

Falling face first meant that when he flailed for something to catch himself upon, he was reaching forward and not backward. His hands found one of the elevator cables and latched on tight. The braided wire dug through his gloves, into his hands, but it stopped his fall. His, not Sollux's. When the dead weight jerked against him, one of Karkat's hands lost its grip. He cried out as all the weight was suddenly taken by his previously injured shoulder, the laceration there wrenched open. Some of the muscle must have ripped, too, because his whole arm seized in white hot pain. He could feel fresh blood drip down his back. It hurt like hell, but he still had some use of his arm as he tightened his grip and fumbled for the slide on his belt. It was meant for repelling with rope, not steel cabling, and beggars didn't get to be choosers at the moment. He got lucky because it fit around wire, leaving him mostly secured to it in short order. A leftover piece of regen film got slapped over the whole mess that was now his shoulder and then he was sliding unsteadily down as fast as he dared, yet faster than was probably healthy.

It was impossible to know how many stories he'd fallen, let alone how many more he sailed past. All he cared about was getting away from the voices shouting information to one another and the little blocks of light that were other doors being opened, looking for them now that he'd left a neon sign pointing to their exit strategy. Somehow, he managed to stay ahead, but that wouldn't last for long. Every asshole with a gun and some sort of clearance would most definitely be waiting for them where the elevator itself had stopped, so when the ache in his ruined shoulder could be felt all the way down into his wrist and hip, Karkat called it quits. He groped in the dark, first for the service ladder, then for the doors themselves. There had to be security on every floor by now, specifically around the elevators. Though for as long as his feet could carry them, he wasn't going to stop trying to find a way out. That meant taking a chance on getting out of the pit he'd thrown them into.

Fortune decided to smile upon his circumstances. The floor he'd chosen seemed to be under renovation, which meant all normal service to it was blocked and it had been locked down for the night. He managed to wedge the sliding doors open, leverage himself into the gap, and after a few stomach dropping seconds of almost falling back into the void, Karkat made it onto solid ground again. There wasn't really time to rest, but he took a moment to check over Sollux, who thankfully seemed no worse for the escapade. On the other hand, Karkat was gathering quite the collection of soon-to-be scars. His left shoulder was more of a gory gash now, the pain rending the rest of his arm mostly inoperable. His hands had been badly abraded by the steel elevator cable and the cut on his thigh hadn't been deep, but it was long. He bound what he could with strips from the cloak, resettled his friend's seemingly heavier weight, and started trying to find a new way out.

Part of the construction had apparently bled into the floor below, leaving weird holes everywhere. Considering his shoulder and leg, Karkat wasn't eager to simply drop himself through one. He was looking for a ladder or something when he happened upon the drone that had been left behind to guard tools. No longer hindered by cramped hallways, it was every bit as terrifying as it had been when he was a child. He managed to stay in its blind spot until he was almost completely past it. He wasn't exactly sure what tripped its sensors; all Karkat heard was the perfunctory "Surrender and die" and he was hurtling down the nearest hole, dropping awkwardly right in front of a firing squad that had been very obviously waiting for him. A quick dive to the side and an unfortunate potted plant were all that saved him from going down right then and there.

"Hold fire! He's still got the psionic!" The words smeared together as Karkat scrambled back to his feet, His legs protested the hard landing they'd just endured, though a rush of adrenaline got him moving again. The snarls of more sniffer dogs kept him going, blindly running through dust barriers and regular cubicles. Everything focused down to away. He had to get away…

Fire raced up his leg and jerked it out from under him. He hit the ground hard, taking the impact on his knees and forearms. The pain in his leg clashed with the fresh burst in his shoulder, nearly knocking him senseless. He fumbled for a second with the harness release, letting Sollux roll off his back as he twisted to see what had caught a hold of him. The eerie electric green of night vision enhanced eyes stared back at him from over the too many teeth to possibly fit maw of a sniffer dog now attached to his calf. It didn't even look much like a dog anymore. The jaws had been replaced with hyperdontal steel traps, the eyes augments with lenses of all types, and the nose, which gave them their name, was more like an open sinus cavity between the two. What cybernetics couldn't accomplish, steroids finished, leaving behind a quadrapedal something that might have once been a dog.

Fear and pain twisted together into strength. A useless kick only made it bite harder. His hands scrambled for something to swing with, catching at something heavy that he used to lash out. It was apparently a crowbar and it caught the sniffer dog dead in one of the eyes. The pressure on his leg increased, threatening to crush everything in between, when he swung a second time. The make-shift weapon bounced off the exposed nasal tissue, which was apparently tender. The jaws loosened just enough he could yank the meaty part of his calf away. The steel trap closed again almost instantly, this time over his ankle, the boot doing nothing to protect or slow the crushing force. Karkat shifted his grip and swung again, shoving the flat edge into the ruined eye and beyond. In a final act of defiance, it bit down, the snap of delicate bones following it into death.

He had to wrestle the crowbar free again so that he could pry the jaws open again. Then Karkat started binding what was left of his leg, trying to remember to breathe through the pain. He was shivering by the time he was done, drenched in sweat, tears, and too much adrenaline. A glance over at his friend, his blood smeared across a lax face and barely moving chest, was all it took to make reality crash down like a two-ton sledgehammer. Karkat started crying again as he reached out, trying to wipe some of the gore from Sollux's face, even though he really only exceeded at smearing it around.

Not here. Not like this. He couldn't carry the other anymore, but with the help of some construction plastic, he managed to drag his friend into a nearby office. The door was barricaded with as much as he could move, which was pitifully little and wouldn't keep anyone out for long. Didn't have to be long, though…just long enough. Ultimately, Karkat ended up on the far side of the room, curled into a corner with Sollux held tightly in his lap, coming to terms with the fact it was over. He'd tried. He'd failed. And failure had always been the overwhelming majority of probability. Even if everything had gone perfectly, it still could have failed, so really, there shouldn't have been much surprise in coming to a quite literal dead end. It had all been a wing and a prayer from the start, all childish hubris, stubborn idiocy, honest hope to believe it could go right…and he had so many people to apologize to because it had not. Starting with—

He touched the comm. still miraculously in his ear. "…Kankri?"

"—rkat? Karkat! Where have yo—"

"Shut up, because I'm never saying this again. …I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry and I need you to tell dad and Gamzee and everyone else that I'm so fucking sorry. Especially dad and Gamzee; they're not going to understand…"

"…Kitkit…what are you talking about?"

His brother's voice as gone quiet and the use of his baby name nearly broke Karkat's resolve. He took a deep breath and steeled himself against the clench in his chest. "I'm telling you to get everyone you can out and blow this place to hell."

It had always been part of the plan to demolish the government buildings once they were done with the raid, meant to cripple any attempt at retaliation as well as serve as a final one finger salute. Everyone who was actually infiltrating had been given flares they were to ignite once the building was clear. Even with his sense of time screwed nine ways from yesterday, Karkat knew everyone else had to be close to finished. He wasn't going to make it, but they could. They could still make this one final strike.

"But you're not out." There was an edge of panic now. "Where are you?"

"It's doesn't matter anymore—"

"It matters!" Kankri shouted, loud enough to make the comm. hiss static. At another point in time, it would have been funny to hear such an un-calm, reactionary version of his brother. Now, it just made Karkat smile fondly.

"No, it doesn't," he repeated gently, the irony in their switched positions not lost to him. "Kri... My shoulder's a mess and my leg's been through a meat grinder. I can't carry him; I can't even walk. I jumped right into a trap and I'm sorry I was too stupid to just stick with the plan, I really am, but there's no way in hell I can get out of here in—"

"Where are you? …Answer me, damnit! _Where the fuck are you?!_"

"…I—I don't know…" Karkat stammered, shocked that his brother had sworn. Kankri never swore. "I fell in the elevator shaft, and then down a hole in the floor from one that was under construction or something…"

"Then get your ass to a window and tell me what you see!" the other snapped back. "Move it, Kitkit!"

The tone alone had Karkat clawing his way back to his feet, hobbling unsteadily to the office's drawn blinds. He tore them down more by accident than by design, and found himself staring out at the war he had started. The thick glass didn't let more than the occasional muted boom pass through, the feedback from the comm. running behind by a noticeable few seconds, making the view even more surreal. Fire was everywhere, dripping from windows in other buildings, reaching up from the ground and trying to find more to consume, great gouts that burned brightly in the dark as something exploded and a thousand short lived shooting stars that marked volleyguns and rpgs. He could see broken blockade lines, overturned vehicles and overrun choke points, and the char left behind a constantly retreating defensive line. Against the multi-coloured lights of the rest of the city, dazzling like jewels resting on the black velvet of night, it was almost poignant; could have even been, maybe, if the backdrop hadn't overpowered the foreground. As it was, all the lights and shadows blended into one another until they were practically indiscernible, ruining whatever effect the contrast might have had.

"What do you see?" Kankri asked desperately.

"I'm on the mid-to-front side—I can see the plaza fire. I still gotta be way up…"

"Renovations were underway on floors twenty through twenty-five. Does anyone see him?"

"You know there are a lot of windows over there, right?" Roxy responded, sounding slightly out of breath.

"Not to mention the building's only half lit up," Jade added.

The glass was too thick to break, not that Karkat could lift or throw anything at this point anyway. Couldn't scar the surface, either. He did still have that flare… Stiffening fingers worked it free from his belt, then filled the room with choking sulfur fumes and the blinding red glare.

"Got it!" both girls sang out. "Floor twenty-one, eastern corner, twelfth window in. Tracer ping in three." A few seconds later, there were two dull thuds against the glass. Then a much heavier thud came from the door. Karkat turned and made a mostly successful lob of the flare at the door. The light and smoke might warn whoever off, but it wouldn't take long for the only exit to be consumed in fire.

"—ke cover. Terez—incoming rocket—"

"Terezi's got _what?!_" Karkat didn't receive an answer as the building shook. He threw himself back towards Sollux as the next impact shattered glass, somehow getting the other body covered by his own as a third and forth made the whole world disintegrate.

The terrible lurch of being gravity's plaything was matched by the jarring shock of the abrupt stop at the end. Karkat did his best to protect his friend's head, tried to spread his weight out so that he was shielding without crushing the rest of the body. There was a dull roar behind the exceptionally loud thrum of his own pulse, beating wildly and with force in his ears. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see, and was half convinced he was already dead when that abrupt stop proved otherwise. It didn't seem like he should be able to hurt anymore—weren't those receptors supposed to have a limit?—even though he did. For a small eternity, all he could do was lay there and struggle to exist. But what was the point in existing anymore? He was so tired…

_…KK…_

The ghost of a sound had him opening his eyes. Exhausted, in shock, and probably dangerously anemic, Karkat still leveraged himself up and tried to take stock of his surroundings. The explosions had ripped a good sized chunk out of the building, dropping them a good three floors, at least. The still hot night air was a welcomed caress even though it was as acrid and foul as it had always been. He got Sollux sort of propped up against him and pulled them both towards the crumbling edge.

"I'm sorry, Sollux," he whispered as the first flare went up, a brilliant white-blue. "This was as free as I could get you." A green flare soon joined it. "You deserved better than this." He turned as another two flares blazed into the sky, red and orange respectively. Somehow, Karkat managed to get the other's arms around his neck and struggled back to his feet. It left him breathing hard, shaking and dizzy and perilously close to the oblivion he had wanted before, but they were standing and that's what mattered. Yellow, then purple, stained the wreckage and the numerous faces of every security personnel who could find their way into it. The number was a quite surprising many. They probably thought he was using Sollux as a shield. The truth was Karkat only wanted his friend to see as much of his freedom as possible, even though he could see nothing at all at the moment. There was someone official looking trying to talk to him. The words were coming from too far away to understand, though. Not that it really mattered, anyway. The flares signaled the end—the others were out and away, safe from the final act of destruction.

"I'm glad you were my friend." Karkat didn't know whether he actually said the words out loud or only in his head. Just like he didn't know whether or not his legs simply gave out or if the concussive blast against his back made something underfoot shift. What he did know was that he was falling again. That with his failing strength, he needed to hold on as tightly as he could. That there was one last thing he needed to say before he became another blood smear on the concrete.

"…I think…I'm in love with you…"

It was probably just a trick of his mind, but that ghost of a sound came back, leaving him content to his fate. The world faded to black and Karkat felt nothing as he plummeted towards the ground.

The first few times, the light came with an unbearable amount of weight, heat, and—it took a little bit for the word to manifest—pain. He struggled against it even as he was inextricably drawn towards it. If he floundered for too long, something from somewhere outside all of it would take pity, helping him back into the weightless nothing he came from, comforting and soothing for reasons he couldn't fathom. He never went back far, though, left hovering ever closer to that light. The closer he got, the more things began to filter back. First simple things, like the pronoun "he" and what it meant. Pain. Weight. Light. Darkness. Then concepts slowly began filling in gaps. Small connections began forming that in turn facilitated other connections, branching out further, faster, with each new correlation. Memories started to present themselves, randomly at first, then in greater, more meaningful chunks. By the time he was actually ready to step into the light, and therefore true consciousness, he remembered who he was and most of what he'd done.

The pain was still there. If he remembered correctly, it would be there for a long time. Unlike before, however, it wasn't overwhelming. It came in small waves mostly, only spiking when some part of his body was jostled before returning to a general disquieted state. It also came from a variety of sources, though it culminated in his head, threatening to shatter his skull if he so much as dared to breathe too fast. He was seriously tempted to retreat again when something large and cool pressed against his too warm skin, helping everything settle. Recognizing that as part of the soothing comfort from earlier, he rested a bit, the pushed forward once more, intent on finding the nameless source.

Bleary colours slowly gave way to more defined patches, but each blink took an exhausting amount of effort and was difficult to overcome. He was still so tired. He just wanted to sleep more and maybe just never wake back up. The form above him made a soft noise and the idea was forgotten as quickly as it had formed. He tried again, this time with better success, and the fuzzy patch of white and grey resolved itself into a face. He stared a little bit longer, frowning slightly as he tried to piece together speech.

"…Gamzee?" That's what he tried to say, at least. It came out more as a garbled moan with extra vowel accents. There was a heavy metallic taste in his mouth, his tongue seemed glued to his hard palette, and it felt like he'd tried to gargle sand at some point, his throat left raw and dry. His jaw moved stiffly as he tried a more articulate utterance. "Wha—?"

Gamzee made a shooshing sound, long fingers ever so gently tapping his cheeks, making him belatedly realize it was the other's hands holding his skull in one piece. "It's all good, bro. Motherfucking fine as pie even if the tin's a little worse for wear."

That statement did nothing to clear up the confusion Karkat felt, but it was obvious his brain wasn't working well to begin with. He gave up on the talking for a little bit to concentrate on his surroundings. The gray light of dawn was creeping in from a nearby window, providing depth and dimension to a room he vaguely recognized. He was laying in a bed, his head pillowed in his friend's lap for some bizarre reason. As his eyes drifted across the featureless walls and ceiling, Karkat tried to put together the still scrambled bits of memory that would explain why he was there.

He remembered adrenaline and pain coalescing into a profound need for forgiveness against his failure. The vehement denial of such forgiveness from the one source it had always come from. Circumstance changing, then flipping, then dissolving as flares streaked through the night sky and then he was falling again…falling in his last act of defiance… Falling to a sound that made falling all right…

"Sollux!" He jerked in panic. His body protested the abuse, the agony enough to send him back to the black edge of oblivion though it failed to quell either his panic or the rising sense of loss. That final fall had been more than a death sentence; it was the method of execution, both his and Sollux's fates sealed long before that particular moment. Yet here he was, alive against the odds, without reason and—

"Breathe." The command left nothing to choice: Karkat inhaled deeply, shuddering and hitching when it left his lungs. "Again." He choked a bit as his body fought back, trying to go in too many directions at once. "I said again, motherfucker." The pressure in his chest released, letting another rush of air in and then out, in and out, until a rhythm was established against the frantic pace of his heart. "That's it. Keep breathing. It's the most important motherfucking thing right now; deep and slow. The rest will work its-motherfucking-self out, but that miraculous gift of breath has got to keep flowing, brother. Don't deny yourself it because you think you don't motherfucking deserve it."

Karkat kept focusing on drawing air into his lungs and releasing it again mostly because he couldn't focus on anything else, wobbling dangerously between hysteria and heaviness. For an interminable amount of time, it felt like the pressure in his head would never ease nor that the trip-hammer of his pulse would slow. Then it did, leaving him dazed in the wake of his still unhappy nerve-endings reminding him of the hell he'd recently gone through. When he regained the cohesion to open his eyes again, he found that his pillow had moved somewhat, allowing him to see the rest of the room.

…and there was Sollux, also laid out on a bed not more than three feet away, thin, and fragile, and so beautifully still alive that Karkat could feel the weight choking him dissolve. At first glance, it didn't seem like the other's circumstance had changed much. He was still bound up, attached to wires and tubes and machines, only this time those things were working for him instead of the other way around. It was gorgeous and frightening to behold, invoking too many emotions for him to hang on to a single one and simply feel it. He never wanted to look away, but Gamzee had other ideas. Long limbs stretched before refolding, changing the way Karkat was held and thus blocking the view again. As the certainty that this was reality began to sink in, Karkat lifted his gaze back to his friend's face and asked the only question that seemed to mattered anymore.

"…How?"

Dark eyes clouded with tears, the perpetual smile wavering. "A right old-fashioned motherfucking miracle is how. Your bro was screaming all the colours of the rainbow, wanting to know what happened while the flares were dancing in the sky. There was a whole mess of us coming to find you, you know? Would have torn that place apart piece by motherfucking piece if we needed to, but you didn't wait. I was coming for you like I motherfucking swore I always would and you didn't motherfucking wait. Had to be a badass motherfucker, falling dramatically and shit while the world burned around you. Everyone else froze up; I ran faster, though I knew there wasn't a motherfucking thing I could do even if I was there except drag your motherfucking corpse back for rites.

"Then your miracle kicked in. Halfway down, you just started to motherfucking glow like some giant lightning bug, all pretty red and blue. Didn't stop your drop, just stalled it out a bit. Let this motherfucker catch up and make sure your pan didn't end up all over the motherfucking ground."

Red and blue…red and blue… The colours were supposed to mean something important, but what exactly eluded Karkat at the moment. He focused on what he did understand instead, which in this case was that his biggest supporter was attempting to not cry over him. He tried to reach up, touch his friend's face or run his fingers through the unruly mop of hair. His strength failed before he even got his hand off his chest. Gamzee seemed to catch the intention and let one of his massive paws curl over the top of it, careful of the bandages and intravenous lines.

"I'm sorry," Karkat tried to say, the words still coming out horribly slurred.

"Ain't got a motherfucking thing to be sorry about," the other reassured. "All's well that ends well. That's what miracles are about, motherfucker." Gamzee somehow bent himself in half, pressing a gentle kiss to Karkat's forehead. "Go back to sleep, bro. You've done more than your motherfucking share. Let another motherfucker worry for a while."

Considering that he was already starting to drift off anyway, there wasn't much use in arguing. Rather, Karkat moved his head a bit, with his pillow politely accommodating, so that he could see Sollux once more, just to prove he really wasn't dreaming any of this. There were still so many things that didn't make sense, but Gamzee began to sing softly and the details became unimportant. They were alive, they were safe, and most importantly, they were finally, _finally_, free. And that was all that mattered. His thoughts floated along in a semi-contented haze as consciousness once more lost its grip. For the first time in a long while, it was okay to sleep, that ever elusive ghost of sound once again flaring brightly, never to be forgotten again.

_…I think…I'm in love with you…_

_…I think I love you too, KK…_

* * *

Thank you for reading!


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